Black Sea Dahu — Glue

To listen to Glue, the new Black Sea Dahu single, is to be swept up in a whirlwind of technicolor sonics and then left cocooned up in a dewy lightness of spirit, smiling. In the words of vocalist and bandleader Janine Cathrein, the song shows “a new side to Black Sea Dahu. The colours are different. Everything seems richer. There are more contrasts musically and emotionally, which will become even more apparent once we release the record.”

Glue is a song that deals with memory loss. It was inspired by Janine’s visit to her grandmother’s nursing home. “My grandmother is living with dementia. It makes me sad that so much of her world is inaccessible to me. Glue was my attempt to understand what goes on in her head. In a way, her condition shelters her from the madness of this world.” Memory loss, however, isn’t just a condition of the old. She continues, “We’re out here ruining everything when we could be learning from the mistakes of previous generations. Will we ever stop to reevaluate our ideas and values? Can we undo the wrong turns that we’ve taken?”

Glue is the first Black Sea Dahu song written on a piano. In the studio, Janine decided to play a vintage Yamaha PSR-6 keyboard, which explains why the track is suffused with a soothing, warm hiss. While the beat sways steadily like a parading elephant and a Morricone-like twangy guitar swoops in and out, Janine’s vocals grow from a single voice into a tornado of harmonies, evoking the feeling of being airborne. The song really does feel like flying. It’s just too bad that the landing comes in just a couple of minutes!